RUSSIA/РОССИЯ THREAD—ASSANGE CHRGD W/ SPYING—DJT IMPEACHED TWICE-US TREASURY SANCTS KILIMNIK AS RUSSIAN AGNT
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resurrection
By Way of Deception, Thou Shalt Do War
TRUMP IS BEEFING WITH NIKKI HALEY AND THERES RUMORS SHE MAY RUN IN 2020 AGAINST TRUMP WITH MIKE PENCE!
Sanctions Flap Erupts Into Open Conflict Between Haley and White House
April 17, 2018
Nikki R. Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, had said the administration would impose sanctions on Russian companies found to be assisting Syria’s chemical weapons program, a position later contradicted by the White House.Lawrence Jackson for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — President Trump was watching television on Sunday when he saw Nikki R. Haley, his ambassador to the United Nations, announce that he would impose fresh sanctions on Russia. The president grew angry, according to an official informed about the moment. As far as he was concerned, he had decided no such thing.
It was not the first time Mr. Trump has yelled at the television over something he saw Ms. Haley saying. This time, however, the divergence has spilled into public in a remarkable display of discord that stems not just from competing views of Russia but from larger questions of political ambition, jealousy, resentment and loyalty.
The rift erupted into open conflict on Tuesday when a White House official blamed Ms. Haley’s statement about sanctions on “momentary confusion.” That prompted her to fire back, saying that she did not “get confused.” The public disagreement embarrassed Ms. Haley and reinforced questions about Mr. Trump’s foreign policy — and who speaks for his administration.
At the very least, the episode highlighted the crossed circuits over foreign policy in an administration with no secretary of state, an increasingly marginalized White House chief of staff and a national security adviser who has only been on the job for a week and has pushed out many of the senior national security officials in the White House but has yet to bring in his own team.
Since Mr. Trump fired Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson last month, Ms. Haley has been the administration’s leading foreign policy figure. And yet she was not kept in the loop on a major decision involving perhaps America’s most powerful adversary.
According to several officials, the White House did not inform Ms. Haley that it had changed course on sanctions, leaving her to hang out alone.
“It damages her credibility going forward and once again makes everyone, friend and foe alike, wonder that when the United States says something, approves something, calls for something, opposes something, is it for real?” said Representative Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia and a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “Should we wait to see what Trump does the next day?”
The clash was reminiscent of various occasions when Mr. Trump has directly undercut subordinates, as when Mr. Tillerson broached the idea of negotiations with North Korea and the president scolded him on Twitter not to waste his time. Many in Washington and at the United Nations were riveted by the sharp exchange on Tuesday between the White House and its senior international diplomat.
“She got ahead of the curve,” Larry Kudlow, the president’s national economics adviser, told reporters at a briefing in Florida before Mr. Trump welcomed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan to his Mar-a-Lago estate. “She’s done a great job. She’s a very effective ambassador, but there might have been some momentary confusion about that.”
Ms. Haley took umbrage. A few hours later, she spoke with Dana Perino of Fox News, who quoted her response on air: “With all due respect, I don’t get confused.”
Mr. Kudlow then called Ms. Haley to apologize. “She was certainly not confused,” Mr. Kudlow told The New York Times by telephone. “I was wrong to say that — totally wrong.”
He added: “As it turns out, she was basically following what she thought was policy. The policy was changed and she wasn’t told about it, so she was in a box.”
The argument that Ms. Haley had merely gotten out ahead of a decision was undercut by the fact that the White House itself had sent out word to surrogates on Saturday — the day before her remarks — letting them know that it had already decided to take punitive action against Moscow.
“We also intend to impose specific additional sanctions against Russia to respond to Moscow’s ongoing support for the Assad regime, which has enabled the regime’s atrocities against the Syrian people,” said a document distributed by the Republican National Committee that was titled “White House talking points.”
And yet an administration official said there was a quick recognition on Sunday that Ms. Haley had gone too far in her remarks on “Face the Nation” on CBS.
This official said that the State Department called an aide to Ms. Haley shortly after she appeared on the show, to suggest she issue a correction. Ms. Haley’s aide replied that her office was considering a correction, but none was ever released. Instead, the White House was left to say the next day that no sanctions had been approved.
Such conflicts leave foreign governments in a bind as they try to interpret American moves.
“Coordinated messaging by our government on matters as serious as these is very important, so it is best that an episode such as this one not be repeated,” said John Negroponte, a former ambassador to the United Nations. He added that he was confident that Ms. Haley “has absolutely no interest in undercutting, contradicting or getting out in front of the White House.”
Beyond the immediate disconnect, though, is a deeper strain between Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley, according to administration officials and other insiders. Ms. Haley has been perhaps the most hawkish voice on Russia on a team headed by a president who has emphasized his fervent desire for friendship with President Vladimir V. Putin.
At times, that serves the president’s interests because she can say what he will not. But at other times, he has grown exasperated by her outspokenness.
At one point recently, he saw Ms. Haley on television sharply criticizing Russia over its intervention in Ukraine. “Who wrote that for her?” Mr. Trump yelled angrily at the screen, according to people briefed on the moment. “Who wrote that for her?”
A former governor of South Carolina, Ms. Haley has assumed a more prominent role than most of her predecessors, at times eclipsing the secretary of state. And along the way, Mr. Trump has grown suspicious of her ambition, convinced that she had been angling for Mr. Tillerson’s position and increasingly wondering whether she wants his own job.
Republicans close to the White House whisper about the prospect of an alliance between Ms. Haley and Vice President Mike Pence, possibly to run as a ticket in 2020.:weebaynanimated:
Aides to both scoff at such suggestions, but the slightest hint of such a pairing would be likely to enrage Mr. Trump, who has made it clear that he plans to run for re-election. The talk was exacerbated in recent days when Mr. Pence named Jon Lerner, Ms. Haley’s deputy, as his new national security adviser, while allowing him to keep his job at the United Nations.
That plan collapsed within 48 hours when Mr. Trump grew angry at reports that Mr. Lerner had made anti-Trump ads for the Club of Growth, an economic conservative advocacy group, during Republican primaries in 2016. Mr. Lerner stepped down from the job in Mr. Pence’s office.
Ms. Haley draws strong feelings on both sides of the aisle. In Republican circles, she is a favorite of neoconservatives and national security hawks like Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, but viewed skeptically by more the isolationist wing that sees Mr. Trump as a champion. Among Democrats, she has respect from those who see her as a voice of reason and scorn from others who see her as overly combative.
“Nikki Haley is a neocon in her view,” said Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California. “Basically, she’s a parrot for the McCain-Lindsey Graham worldview of ‘Let’s go bomb Iran, let’s go fight another cold war with Russia, let’s go use force around the world.’”
Mr. Connolly, on the other hand, described her as an important counterpoint to Mr. Trump. “She’s been a little island of some sanity in this otherwise dysfunctional, irrational, volatile White House when it comes to foreign policy,” he said. “She’s now getting the Tillerson treatment. And so perhaps this island will be swallowed up by rising sea levels.”
Peter Baker and Julie Hirschfeld Davis reported from Washington, and Maggie Haberman from New York. Reporting was contributed by Rick Gladstone from New York; Mark Landler from West Palm Beach, Fla.; and Gardiner Harris, Lara Jakes, Jonathan Martin and Noah Weiland from Washington.
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Mattis Wanted Congressional Approval Before Striking Syria. He Was Overruled.
April 17, 2018
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Tuesday. He briefed lawmakers on Capitol Hill about last week’s allied airstrikes in Syria.Erin Schaff for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis urged President Trump to get congressional approval before the United States launched airstrikes against Syria last week, but was overruled by Mr. Trump, who wanted a rapid and dramatic response, military and administration officials said.
Mr. Trump, the officials said, wanted to be seen as backing up a series of bellicose tweets with action, but was warned that an overly aggressive response risked igniting a wider war with Russia.
Friday night’s limited strikes on three targets, which lasted under two minutes, were the compromise.
The debate reflects a divide between Mr. Trump and the defense secretary, who, like no other member of the cabinet, has managed to maintain a cordial relationship with the president even while reining him in.
Until this month, Mr. Mattis had a buffer at the White House in the former national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who often deferred to the defense secretary, a retired four-star Marine general. The arrival of Mr. Trump’s new national security adviser, John R. Bolton, means that buffer is gone.
Administration and congressional officials said the hawkish Mr. Bolton is not expected to defer to the defense secretary; already, neoconservative members of the Republican foreign policy establishment have started to air concerns that Mr. Mattis is ceding strategic territory to Iran and Russia in Syria.
Mr. Mattis is widely viewed by global leaders as the strongest and perhaps most credible voice on foreign policy in an administration that has been rocked by firings and resignations among senior presidential advisers. The recent exits of both General McMaster and Rex W. Tillerson as secretary of state has focused more attention on Mr. Mattis’s role in the cabinet.
On Tuesday, Mr. Mattis and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, briefed lawmakers on Capitol Hill about the Syria airstrikes in closed-door meetings.
“We’ve got to put a check on this president, on any president, when it comes to Congress’s constitutional responsibility to wage war,” Representative Barbara Lee, Democrat of California, said in an interview on Tuesday. She called last week’s Syria’s strikes “illegal.”
As he pressed his case last week, before the allied strikes with Britain and France, Mr. Mattis lost the battle over getting congressional authorization. But he won the larger war.
Mr. Mattis prevailed in limiting the strikes to three targets that did not risk endangering Russian troops scattered at military installations around Syria. Nor did the 105 missiles hit Syrian military units believed to be responsible for carrying out an April 7 suspected chemical weapons attack on Douma, near Damascus.
In the end, the narrowly targeted strikes belied Mr. Trump’s description Friday night of a larger coordinated response that could take days or weeks.
“The combined American, British and French response to these atrocities will integrate all instruments of our national power — military, economic and diplomatic,” Mr. Trump said in an address to the nation as the strikes were underway. “We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents.”
But there have been no additional strikes since then, and the Pentagon said no more are being planned. “This is a one-time shot,” Mr. Mattis said on Friday, calling the airstrikes “a very strong message to dissuade” President Bashar al-Assad of Syria from using chemical weapons against his own people.
Mr. Trump’s drumbeat of threats last week of a sharp response to the suspected gas attacks all but guaranteed that the United States military would strike Syria, according to two Defense Department officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Even so, Mr. Mattis pushed to get congressional authorization, according to people with knowledge of the internal debate. In several White House meetings last week, he underscored the importance of linking military operations to public support — a view Mr. Mattis has long held.
Col. Patrick S. Ryder of the Air Force, a spokesman for General Dunford, on Tuesday declined to discuss the internal debate between the Pentagon and the White House over the strikes’ reach before they were launched.
It marked the second public divergence of views between Mr. Trump and Mr. Mattis over Syria in the past two weeks.
Just days before the suspected chemical attack, the president said he was ready for the estimated 2,000 American troops currently in Syria to leave the battlefield, where they have been fighting alongside Kurdish allies against the Islamic State. Mr. Mattis and other aides quickly talked him out an immediate withdrawal.
Pentagon officials said there was also worry that congressional opposition to American military engagements that still rely on authorizations approved after the 2001 terrorist attacks could grow without getting Capitol Hill onboard before striking at Mr. Assad’s chemical weapons program.
Mr. Trump did not necessarily want to hit Syria hard enough to bring Russia into the war, administration officials said. But he did want to appear aggressive in his response.
“He just wants the big show,” said Derek Chollet, an assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration. “So Mattis was probably pushing on an open door.”
Mr. Mattis is particularly concerned about overextending the American military in Syria. He does not want the United States to veer from its stated policy of focusing only on the fight in Syria against the Islamic State — and avoid delving into the country’s seven-year civil war.
Russian forces and Iranian militias have helped Mr. Assad remain in power against Syrian opposition fighters who accuse him of a brutal siege against the country.
“The strike was really just enough to cover the president politically, but not enough to spark a war with the Russians,” said Jon Soltz, a two-tour veteran of the Iraq war who is chairman of the liberal veterans group VoteVets. “It was clear the military had tight constraints on the operation, and that everybody in the military seemed to know that except the president.”
Mr. Mattis publicly disputed suggestions on Tuesday that the limited strikes amounted to little more than a public relations punch at Mr. Assad.
“The French, the United Kingdom, the United States, allies, all NATO allies, we worked together to maintain the prohibition on the use of chemical weapons,” Mr. Mattis said at the Pentagon. “We did what we believe was right under international law, under our nation’s laws.
“And I hope that this time, the Assad regime got the message,” Mr. Mattis said.
Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed reporting.
Hood Critic
The Power Circle
Well if Trump was splacking Haley, he won't be for a while now.
Clayton Endicott
Superstar
The way Stephanie Miller broke it down this morning was funny as shyt. Basically Cohen is a slimeball that nobody consults with unless they're involved in some kind of fukkery. If Hannity has eight lawyers for various matters like he claims he does, why was he consulting with Cohen? The reason, fukkery.
I am about 130 pages into Comey's book, and I have to say I consider it a must read for almost anyone, but certainly those who have followed this thread. Far from a Fire & Fury spectacle, it is quietly inspirational and compelling, as well as a clear cut look into some of the cases that I knew of, through media coverage (Martha Stewart, "enhanced interrogation, Stellar Wind), but never really understood, as I was too young, and not engaged at the level I am now.
I have a background, that is in many ways opposite of Comey's, but I felt a deep sense of respect and even envy for those people who have seen so much and worked hand in hand with really the guiding hands of the country, and world. In a different life, where I was brought up in east coast blue blood family, I would have loved to have a similar career path as some of the people described in the book, much as that surprises me.
I have a background, that is in many ways opposite of Comey's, but I felt a deep sense of respect and even envy for those people who have seen so much and worked hand in hand with really the guiding hands of the country, and world. In a different life, where I was brought up in east coast blue blood family, I would have loved to have a similar career path as some of the people described in the book, much as that surprises me.
Grano-Grano
The Bando
Man, I loved Stephanie Miller during the Bush years. Is there a link to that?
